Reliance Jio & LeEco Plan to Disrupt Smart Television Market in India

Television industry in India is currently dominated by brands like Sony, LG, Panasonic and Samsung. Micromax has been the latest entrant and has had decent success in this space. However, they have ended up being a budget television player. There haven’t been much advancements in televisions of late, solely because of the technology decay rate of such electronic devices.

The latest bug in television market, smart television, has hit the major players around the world, and Reliance Jio and LeEco are planning to launch their own smart TVs in India soon.

Reliance Jio, the 4G LTE network from Reliance, will be launching the smart LED TVs under its LYF brand, while LeEco will be launching its futuristic Super TVs. Currently, smart TVs are quite expensive and not promising enough to spend more than Rs. 50k on.

Market entry strategy of LeEco and Reliance Jio

Reliance Jio is diversifying to different industries in India now, and the television market is huge in the country, growing every year. The smart LED televisions from Jio will take advantage of the LYF smartphones and Jio 4G network to screen shows and movies directly to your television.

“Television sets will be the most important category to take 4G services to the consumers’ homes and will be the next thrust area for Reliance Jio’s devices business after smartphones. The television models will be launched at an aggressive price and Reliance will aim to be one of the leading players in the market,” a Reliance spokesperson said.

On the other hand, LeEco will be disrupting the market with its low-cost high-end feature packed televisions, exactly like their smartphones. LeEco promises rich experience with no compromise to the viewing experience.

Micromax and Intex have been enjoying the market for quite some time now, but it looks like they have some fierce competition from two large companies. Together, both of them captured about 12% to 15% of the market share in 2015.

This situation is very much similar to smartphones, where Micromax Yu, LeEco and Xiaomi started a price war last year which ended up hurting sales of Samsung, LG and Sony. Indian and Chinese manufacturers follow the policy of high-end cost-effective devices and that seems to have clicked with the mindset of Indian buyers.

Would you be willing to ditch the Japanese and Korean counterparts for Indian and Chinese TV makers? The second half of the year will see exciting launches and possibly start a price war, like in case of mobile network and smartphones.